EQ 'Next'

[Threash]

#EQNext world heals within 5 minutes after destruction. Sorry, guys who wanted it to last for years. #SOELive"

[Merusk]

I thought it's been mentioned there's a few stages of vertical growth anyway.

I agree, Kitsune, and think that's why the "D&D" model has remained so influential for the last 40 years.  However, someone always feels they need to reinvent the wheel. I'm willing to let them try on their dime, you learn new lessons when new things are tried.  (And more when they fail than when they succeed.)

#EQNext world heals within 5 minutes after destruction. Sorry, guys who wanted it to last for years. #SOELive"

Someone upthread linked that the "event" stuff and "player housing" stuff would be permanent, so this just means your average guy grubbing for resources/ dwarven ruins won't leave huge holes in the world making it look like swiss-cheese.  It's really the only way to do a MASSIVE Minecraft.  Those servers get drilled enough with just a few dozen people.

[Ingmar]

[same age as D&D]

39 YEARS, THANK YOU

[/same age as D&D]

[Trippy]

What games with no progression do people play for years on end? Outside of very basic Bejeweled sort of stuff and FPSes (and only some of those to boot), almost every single game any of us play here has progression of a sort. MOBAs have character levels and progression, they just compress it into a single match and you reset and start over. The progression is still essential to the entire experience. Likewise with an RTS - you have to climb a tech tree to get to the fancy units, buy upgrades for them, etc. Every game of Civ is an exercise in progression.

Is there a game where you play a persistent character that is completely devoid of progression? I can't think of one. Even in Minecraft you essentially level your way through different tools and gear and such.

Defender (My favorite game of that era)

More seriously, fighting games. I would've said Counter-Strike but you already mentioned FPSes. I.e. people can play PvP games with no character progression for years and years. For non-PvP games it's more rare but things like DDR, Rock Band, etc. come to mind.

[Hawkbit]

Shade of Aran comes to mind as another one like that in its own way, that caused a lot of complaining.

Kharazan was my MMO pinnacle of fun, personally.  We were stuck for 2-3 weeks on Aran, trying to gear up to beat him.  When we finally beat Aran, then Prince, that was a joy.

Then we beat him and nobody ever wanted to go back.  We joked around during the time that we wished beating Prince would have unlocked all the gear from the zone so we could have progressed to new zones without running Kharazan again.  We loved challenging fights; we loathed running same content over and over after we mastered it.

[Merusk]

DDR and Rock Band have progression, they're called "difficulty settings" and "Beat your high score."

It's funny you mention fighting games, though, because they've been used by others as "the kind of progression *I* want in a game." i.e. Progression of manual skill & dexterity vs. more buttons/ hp.

[Malakili]

What games with no progression do people play for years on end? Outside of very basic Bejeweled sort of stuff and FPSes (and only some of those to boot), almost every single game any of us play here has progression of a sort. MOBAs have character levels and progression, they just compress it into a single match and you reset and start over. The progression is still essential to the entire experience. Likewise with an RTS - you have to climb a tech tree to get to the fancy units, buy upgrades for them, etc. Every game of Civ is an exercise in progression.

Is there a game where you play a persistent character that is completely devoid of progression? I can't think of one. Even in Minecraft you essentially level your way through different tools and gear and such.

Starcraft, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, Counter Strike, Quake 3, DOTA (DOTA 2), Street Fighter (etc).  I'm talking about persistent progression which adds power to your character the longer you play.  Basically no competitive game has that, with LoL probably being the exception, except the 30 levels of progression are effectively meaningless to the experience in the long term. 

They do have progression in terms of how well you can play based on your skill at the game - which I am highly in support of - but it is pretty clear we aren't talking about that.

Yes, I realize progression is part of RPGs.  I'm ok with that.  But there is no reason genre couldn't try a few games with much flatter or less important character progression in favor of personal skill level and world progression.

[Hoax]

DDR and Rock Band have progression, they're called "difficulty settings" and "Beat your high score."

It's funny you mention fighting games, though, because they've been used by others as "the kind of progression *I* want in a game." i.e. Progression of manual skill & dexterity vs. more buttons/ hp.

Fighting game "skill" comes much more from very deep game knowledge down to the active frames and hitbox data of each move of each character and anticipation and mindgames to bait or force your opponent into bad situations. Being able to execute the moves means no more than memorizing which ability is bound to which key in Dota/LoL.

All of the people who keep talking about 11 yr olds on Redbull and Ritalin seem really foolish. We aren't talking about 64 slot servers of ffa Quake or some dudebro console shooter.

[Mrbloodworth]

I used to agree with this, but since getting into LOL recently I can see the draw to having 40+ classes in a game to pick and choose from. Especially if they're easy to learn by having 4 abilities instead of jumping into a level 90 WOW character day 1.

That's my understanding of the explanation. You can pick and choose class abilities to use and basically roll your own, then there are the weapon based abilities. They even showed a mage warrior in one of the panels.

AFAIK, Adding more class to your toon IS the progression, and its horizontal at that. More classes you find, the more you have to pick from.

One of the things I loved most about RPG's was the sense of connection I had with my character.  I also liked that I had a unique role in a group and a skill that I was 'the best' at.

None of that has changed, IMO.

[Margalis]

Although I am a huge fan of skill-based progression it's very hard to pull off in a PvE game, especially an MMO where enemies are usually dumb as rocks and all have essentially the same simple AI. The single-player portion of fighting games, FPS games and LoL are all typically awful.

[Kitsune]

I agree with disliking level grinding as vertical progression.  Killing 4,000 kobolds and turning in 500 rat tails to some dude on a corner is not thrilling gameplay.  And I'll point out that Everquest despite the name didn't have very much 'give me 10 rat asses' for quests, which I count to this day as a positive for that game's design.  Still had hours and days and weeks of XP grinding at monster camps, but at least the quests tended to be interesting.

But point being, I'd like to see vertical progression accomplished through meaningful achievement instead of whack-a-mole.  You have a wizard.  You want to set people monsters on fire.  A lot.  So naturally you want super awesome fire spells.  But you start off with the bic spell and can barely light a candle on a calm day.  But there's a crazed hermit living in a cave in Lavastorm and if you go to him and perform these difficult tasks he'll teach you a fireball spell.  Oh, you want more fire?  Well you need to visit the priesthood of Solusek Ro and...

So there's still vertical progression, you get upgrades to skills that make them clearly better than they had been before.  It's just not achieved at all through foozle-whacking and is done instead through unique content.  Which is how a lot of stuff was gained in the original EQ; rare class items were quest rewards from long chains of questing, not raid drops that you ground out through months of gathering tokens to turn in to some artifact vending machine that would then poop out your epic armor.

[Bzalthek]

Don't hand wave "difficult tasks" because we all know dear old crazed hermit will look at you crankily and say "I want you to kill 4,000 kobolds and bring me 500 rat tails"

[Kitsune]

Don't hand wave "difficult tasks" because we all know dear old crazed hermit will look at you crankily and say "I want you to kill 4,000 kobolds and bring me 500 rat tails"

He didn't in EQ.  The quests tended to be more along the line of finding and sniping a particular unique monster.  Of course, some players still murdered everything in the area, some thinking it would hustle the rare spawn, others afraid of adds while fighting the target, but it wasn't usually a requirement to kill a whole big pile of things for the quest completion.

[Engels]

Anyone else find the vault safe sized shoulder pad armor on the Disney-esque lionmanthing entirely disheartening? It took any vague stirrings of curiosity I had and smothered them in a cloud of Wow funk. No amount of 'destructible' environments is going to make up for the physics-less combat animation, either. I guess this is just now the established style of AAA MMOs and we've somehow reached a point of no return.

[Kitsune]

Anyone else find the vault safe sized shoulder pad armor on the Disney-esque lionmanthing entirely disheartening? It took any vague stirrings of curiosity I had and smothered them in a cloud of Wow funk. No amount of 'destructible' environments is going to make up for the physics-less combat animation, either. I guess this is just now the established style of AAA MMOs and we've somehow reached a point of no return.

Yeah, the Kerran went full-retard.  Definitely less interesting than the badass tiger people.  His waist was about as big around as his thigh and his shoulderpads could have housed a dozen orphan children.  It wasn't bad enough to make me despise the entire game, but definitely bad enough that I'd be avoiding ever playing a Kerran character.  The ogre was fairly awful as well; I loved the big fat oafish ogres and trolls.

[Furiously]

Ok... So we get the EQ next Landmark program next Feburary? Then a year and a half later we get the game? Provided we have made enough assets for them? I confuzzled on the whole thing.

[Chockonuts]

I just want to know if you wear a pirate eyepatch, does SOEmote track one eye and both follow it or just leave one eye kind of dead? I want to play a kooky Ogre that looks like Debo from "Friday".

Really though, I do wonder what happens to crosseyed folks looking through that...  

[UnSub]

There were a lot of really, really smart people on that team, and we did some really cool stuff in DCUO, technically.  But the culture there, and quite possibly at most studios (I don't know, as I left the game industry) is very anti-"serious gamer", and I don't mean "serious gamer" to include only the hilariously hardcore that are easy to make fun of.

Going a long way back because I wanted to comment.

DCUO did some technical things very well, but really failed to capture what was promised (and was way too short and SOE made hilarious marketing mistakes along the way). And by god did they have no idea about PvP.

But if this was the internal culture, it explains quite a bit about the game that actually game out.

[Stormwaltz]

Anyone else find the vault safe sized shoulder pad armor on the Disney-esque lionmanthing entirely disheartening?

To me, the proportions of the Kerran didn't suggest a dude wearing armor so much as a dude with his head sticking out of a powered armor mecha.

Something went wrong there.

[Phred]

For even more hilarity check out this petition. LoL

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/fix-eq-next-combat/signatures

[Margalis]

Anyone else find the vault safe sized shoulder pad armor on the Disney-esque lionmanthing entirely disheartening? It took any vague stirrings of curiosity I had and smothered them in a cloud of Wow funk.

I told you guys it was going to look like WoW!

[Maledict]

Even Starcraft has added permanent vertical progression to its multi-player.

People fundamentally like filling bars. People like getting new stuff. People like feeling they have something others don't have. People like feeling more powerful.

It's one thing that GW2 gets criticised a lot for as well - you get the majority of abilities very early on,and you down level in zones so they are never a cakewalk.

[Merusk]

Anyone else find the vault safe sized shoulder pad armor on the Disney-esque lionmanthing entirely disheartening?

To me, the proportions of the Kerran didn't suggest a dude wearing armor so much as a dude with his head sticking out of a powered armor mecha.

Something went wrong there.

Yeah, they took the modern fantasy shoulderpad thing and turned it up past 11.  Shoulderpads haven't truly bothered me the way they do others, but those really did.   It didn't help his snout looked more like an anteater than a lion.

[Numtini]

I was thinking that they'd take the old style EQ graphics and brighten and cartoon them, not go complete with the idiot shoulderpads look from WoW. The kerran was a disaster in almost every way.

[Threash]

It wasn't just the shoulder pads, that kerran looked as wide as he was tall and his arms looked like Popeyes. A cat person should be sleek and agile, not a linebacker.  Save that for the taurens or whatever your ultra buff race is supposed to be. Ogres I guess.

[Megrim]

You do know that tigers weigh, on average what, 250kg?

[tmp]

It wasn't just the shoulder pads, that kerran looked as wide as he was tall and his arms looked like Popeyes. A cat person should be sleek and agile, not a linebacker.  Save that for the taurens or whatever your ultra buff race is supposed to be. Ogres I guess.

Eh, it didn't really bother me. Felt like homage to the classic.



 

[patience]

Even Starcraft has added permanent vertical progression to its multi-player.

People fundamentally like filling bars. People like getting new stuff. People like feeling they have something others don't have. People like feeling more powerful.

It's one thing that GW2 gets criticised a lot for as well - you get the majority of abilities very early on,and you down level in zones so they are never a cakewalk.

This is one of those things Guild Wars did right. I agree with you that people love feeling that they have something others don't have but the deleveling system wasn't exacerbating this feeling in Guild Wars 2 and it is something worth copying in other games.

The Elder Scrolls system where mobs kept leveling up and getting better gear can DIAF though.

The difference between it and GW2 is that it was designed so mobs would stay out of reach of the power you built up. In GW2 being brought down only meant they still stayed the same strength as they always did but now you have more specialized tools to work with that can make encounters refreshing to do over.

[Malakili]

Even Starcraft has added permanent vertical progression to its multi-player.

People fundamentally like filling bars. People like getting new stuff. People like feeling they have something others don't have. People like feeling more powerful.

It's one thing that GW2 gets criticised a lot for as well - you get the majority of abilities very early on,and you down level in zones so they are never a cakewalk.

First of all starcraft didnt add the kind of progression we are talking about here.  They added unlockable skins and dance animations. Secondly, no one that actually likes starcraft cares about it. It's essentially a trick to keep people playing that dont already like the game.  

Maybe I am just sick of rpgs which are endless treadmills, but I would really love an rpg to try relying a little less on that as its core appeal.

[Nebu]

GW2 did some fundamental things VERY right.

- They adjusted players to the content so that the entire world would always present at least some challenge.  You could go back and repeat content or see new, low level content while retaining the fun.  You could also level with a friend without it being a power level session

- They made it so that players could cooperate on content.  All content.  The way they did this was brilliant.  

- They simplified combat without it being trivialized.  A single character can be played a multitude of ways.  

[Numtini]

I liked the auto-downleveling a great deal. I don't think anyone's done it quite as well or got the balance quite as good--probably a result of having all the abilities available at an early level.

[tazelbain]

The big problem with GW2 lack vertically progression is they neglected horizontally progression and only now finally getting around to it.

[shiznitz]

What games with no progression do people play for years on end? Outside of very basic Bejeweled sort of stuff and FPSes (and only some of those to boot), almost every single game any of us play here has progression of a sort. MOBAs have character levels and progression, they just compress it into a single match and you reset and start over. The progression is still essential to the entire experience. Likewise with an RTS - you have to climb a tech tree to get to the fancy units, buy upgrades for them, etc. Every game of Civ is an exercise in progression.

Is there a game where you play a persistent character that is completely devoid of progression? I can't think of one. Even in Minecraft you essentially level your way through different tools and gear and such.

I know it isn't exactly what you mean and those days are long gone, but it was very easy to cap out in UO and still have fun for years after.  As for a modern example, I have nothing.

[Draegan]

The big problem with GW2 lack vertically progression is they neglected horizontally progression and only now finally getting around to it.

The biggest problem that I hear about GW2 isn't lack of "end game" progression, it's that there was no progression anywhere. Most people quit by 20 because they had all their abilities by then and nothing to look forward to for 60 more levels. Their talent point system was awful and still is.

They should of allowed players to level up/augment their weapon abilities somehow.

[Threash]

You do know that tigers weigh, on average what, 250kg?

It's not about weight, it's about proportions.  That thing was built like an elephant, not a tiger.